BY JOHN PETERSON
Pennsylvania, like most of America, is blessed to have a diverse and broad landscape, encompassing small towns, bustling cities and vast open spaces.

In Pennsylvania, 48 of our 67 counties are classified as rural — dotted with farming families and small communities that represent our heritage. However, this rural heritage is constantly struggling from a variety of public policy pressures, whether it’s business/agribusiness, health care, education or a myriad other issues.

And of these issues, the greatest underlying threat is the Obama administration’s anti-domestic oil production energy policy.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average earnings per job in our nation’s metropolitan areas are about $52,000, roughly $15,000 more than in rural areas. Add to that years of limited infrastructure investment along with frequent long-distance travel for work, school, groceries and other necessary errands, and the importance of energy — especially oil — becomes clear.

When it comes to transportation, mass transit is essentially nonexistent in rural areas. And due to weather, road conditions and terrain, many rural residents drive larger, less fuel-efficient vehicles.

Many rural residents live in older houses and work in older buildings that are more difficult to insulate. High heating and cooling costs can be a tremendous expense to families and businesses, thus, a consistent energy policy is vital as energy costs simply take a much larger part of our budget.

In grading President Obama’s performance on energy policy, he has, unfortunately, been a disaster for rural America.

A classic example of inconsistency came in mid-January. The president finally mentioned abundant natural gas supplies, but then in the same month his next energy action was blocking the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline would not only enable us to purchase oil from our best friend, but also put thousands of people to work — a seemingly win-win situation that has fallen into the trap of this administration’s political pandering.

Just Thursday, the Senate narrowly rejected a GOP measure to start construction on the pipeline.

What’s more, Obama has put the brakes on ending our Middle East oil dependency by limiting supply here at home.

He has effectively locked up production of domestic oil, forcing burdensome regulations to slow Gulf Coast permits to a crawl.

In addition, he put the five-year plan of the previous administration on the shelf, preventing offshore oil expansion from cutting the already extremely high price of propane and fuel oil.

These decisions have hurt all Americans and are especially crushing the economic future of rural residents.

This administration is targeting oil companies as part of its agenda to help green energy compete. Renewable energy investments such as the Solyndra episode are evidence that renewable energy is still too expensive and unreliable.

After years of subsidies for alternatives, they generally remain cost prohibitive. Furthermore, wind and solar energy does not replace one barrel of oil, as each watt produced goes into our electric grid and not our vehicles, trucks, ships, planes or trains.

Two other energy-related proposals the president has long pursued are changing the dual capacity rules and Section 199 of the tax code.

While these might sound inconsequential and wonkish, they’re pretty simple and would have dire results.

Dual capacity rules prevent the double taxation of domestic energy providers, first abroad and then again when companies bring their profits back home.

By avoiding double taxation, like all other non-U.S. based energy companies, U.S. energy companies can hire and keep more workers and also not pass the tax on to consumers, giving relief at the pump.

Section 199 of our tax code is a deduction that all manufacturers benefit from to encourage domestic industrial growth.

However, the president and many in Washington would like to prevent energy companies from being able to take this deduction.

America’s oil and gas companies are some of our largest job producers.

From the rural Pennsylvania towns experiencing a renaissance thanks to shale gas development to the Gulf Coast to the Alaskan slopes, the energy sector provides good-paying, family-sustaining jobs for millions of Americans.

While the government hands out billions of tax dollars to struggling companies, domestic energy providers continue to be one of the few sectors sending money into the Treasury.